This report suggests actions and policies that will take California higher education into the 21st century with a renewed commitment to college opportunity. The report recommends a new compact among the state, colleges and universities, and students and their families. It calls for shared responsibility and asks the state and the public to stabilize budgetary support, target additional funding to undergraduate enrollment growth, resist the construction of new campuses, and hold existing institutions accountable for enrolling additional undergraduate students. Two urgent questions are addressed. The first is whether California should continue its historic policy of finding a place on campus for all qualified applicants. This analysis is predicated on the expectation that California citizens will want to continue this tradition. The second issue is whether California actually can manage its higher education system in order to afford both access and quality in the next century. The report suggests 11 strategies to assure that California higher education can accommodate all eligible undergraduates regardless of their financial resources, and that it can maintain and enhance the quality of instruction, research, and public service. These strategies are also aimed at reducing, in the aggregate, the average cost of education per student. (Contains 18 endnotes.) (SLD)